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PRIVATE LIBRARY 

.-- -OF i 

CLARENCE S. PAINE 



MINNEAPOLIS, MINN. 



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Date. 







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tow the IHIHRest has ^l|jioved on: 
AN ADDRESS, 



DEMVEKED AT 



LINCOLN, SEPTEMBER 27, 1877, 



DrKINO THE 



Ke'bfk^kk )3tkte ^hit, 



% 



And upon the invitation of the State Board of Agriculture, ^ 

BY 

OF THE CHICACO TIMES. ' 



of:pioe!:k,s : 

MAETIN DUNHAM, President, 
Omaha . 



JAMES W. MOORE, Treasurer, 

Nebraska City. 



I). H. WHEELER, Secretary, j^^ 

Plattsinoiith. 



.T K HONEYWELL. Chn, Lincoln. , CHRIS. HARTMAN, Omalia. ^> 

C. H. WIXSLOW. Mt. Pleasant. I R. W. FURNAS, J5ro\vnville. 

J. F. KINNEY, Nebraska City. 

l> 



PUBLISHED BY THE 

NEBRASKA STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE, 
±377. 





,ow the mest has ^Ipved on : 

AN ADDRESS, 



DELIVERED AT 



LINCOLN, SEPTEMBER 27, 1877, 



DURINU THE 



Xe'bf k^kk ^tkte ^hi^ 



And iiptin tlic Invitation of tlie State Board of Agriculture, 



PEOF. KODNEY WELCH, 

OP THE CHICAGO TIMES. 



MARTIN DUNIIAM, President, 
Omaha. 



JAMES W. MOORE, Treasurer, 

Nebraska City. 



D. H. WHEELER, Secretary, 
Plattsmoulli. 



BOARD OF MANAGEMS. 

J. K. HONEYWELL, Ch'n. Lincolti. I CHRIS HARTMAN, Omaha. 

C. n. WINSLOW, Mt. Pleasant. I R. W. FURNAS, Brownville. 

J. F. KINNEY, Nebraska Cily. 



PUBLISHED BT THE 

NEBRASKA STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 
1877 



Em 



ADDRESS. 



now THE WEST HAS MOVED ON. 

Mr. President., Ladies and Gentlemen: 

During my cliildliood, passed on a rocky liill-side farm in the 
Fine-Tree state, an event occurred which left a lasting impression 
on my memory. It was the departure from the neighborhood of 
a family for the then far west, the northern portion of the state 
of Illinois. The head of the family was a restless, uneasy man who 
believed there was no place like one a long way from his native home 
He had sought by various occupations and in several places to 
better his condition with only indifterent success. His heart was 
always in some imaginary highlands, far removed from the hills 
within his view. He loved nothing so well as to talk with sailors 
and to read books of travels. On one occasion he went to a sea- 
board town to exchange some russet apples for codfish, then, as now, 
a staple article of diet in old New England. While there he met a 
miner who had just returned from the Black Hills of those days, the 
lead-bearing cliffs about Galena. From him he learned of the mar- 
velous beauty and fertility of the valley of the Kock river in Illinois. 
He came back and immediately began to set his house out of 
order. He found a picture of a prairie schooner in Olney's geog- 
raphy, and gave an oi der to a wheelwright to construct one. Then 
he sought to trade his oxen and cows for a span of horses. As 
people heard of his proposed adventure, they began to remonstrate 
with him; they declared the journey too long and hazardous to be 
undertaken by a delicate woman and young children. They in- 
formed him that the country abounded with ague, poisonous 
plants, rattlesnakes, savage beasts, and yet more savage men. 
Farmer (ireeley had not then spoken the words that did so much 
toward settling up the prairies, but this man had resolved '' to go 
west and grow up with the counti-y." He vowed that he never 
would pick stones another day in his life nor spend another winter 
in a place where there were '• six weeks sleighing in March." 

When people saw that remonstrances were in vain they began 
to consider what ci)uld be done to provide for the temporal and 



religious wants of the family. Books devoted to morality, articles 
of clothing, and bottles of medicine, were sent in without stint. 
When the morning for the departure came, a meeting, pre- 
viously announced, was held in the old church, situated as many 
ancient churches in New Eni>:land are, at the rear of a ffrave- 
yard, in order to present a cheerful appearance. Every seat was 
filled, the family of adventnrers occupying the front pew, ordin- 
arily reserved for mourners at a funeral. The minister, a grave 
and solemn man, opened the exercises by reading an account ot 
the departure of the Israelites from the land of Egypt. In re- 
marks that followed the scripture lesson, he stated that the journey 
about to be undertaken by the people before him, was longer than 
that from Goshen to the Valley of the Jordan, and promised to 
be more perilous than the voyage of the Pilgrim fathers. After 
a doleful hymn had been sung the entire congregation knelt in 
prayer for the preservation of the people who were taking their 
final leave. When they had been assisted to enter their canvas cov- 
ered wagon the women presented the mother with a bible, while 
•a man possessed of more worldly wisdom than piety handed the 
father a double-barreled gun and powder-flask. Finally, we bash- 
ful boys brought our offerings of primroses, lilacs, and sweet ferns 
and gave them to the pale-faced little gins whose eyes were moist 
with tears. Then the strange-looking vehicle started over the 
western hills, and the people repaired to their homes as mourners 
return from the burial of a friend. 

WUERE IS THE WEST OF TO DAY? 

It is no longer on the banks of the Kock, the Mississippi, the 
Des Moines or the Missouri, — it is following the course of the 
Platte and Kansas to their mountain sources. Men who moved 
"out west" from Massachusetts and New York a few years ago 
now find themselves " away down east." I was in Western Kan- 
■sas a few years ago, and heard a farmer complain of the cost of 
moving crops to an eastern market. I asked him where the 
•eastern market was, and he gave me the name of a town upon 
the Mississippi river. I realized then that the words East and 
West, like the words heat and cold, were relative, not absolute, 
terms. The frontier line has been moving westward at the rate 
of five degrees for every decade. To-day the shepherd tends bis 
flock on the prairie where the wandering Indian pursued the 
buffalo a few months ago. The Avild fowls leave a secluded spot 



in the fall to migrate to a milder climate; they return in the 
spring and iind the place dotted over with white cabins. Some 
new settlers took advantage of their brief absence and "jumped their 
claims." Were some Rip Van Winkle to indulge in a two years* 
sleep on a western prairie he would not recognize the place when 
he awoke. Every thing would have changed more in this brief 
time than they changed during twenty years in that sleepy Dutch 
town at the foot of the Catskills, which was immortalized by the 
genius of Irving. Villages succeeded hamlets, towns became 
cities, with such wonderful rapidity that maps and census tables 
aiford but httle information of the development of the country. 
As your guest, I rejoice with you in the prosperity of this new 
state. I see before me the men who turned the first furrows^ 
sowed the first grain and gathered the first harvest in this beauti- 
ful region. I behold the men who caught the winged seed that 
were flyiug in the air from which have sprung trees as beautiful, if 
not as stately, as the cedars of Lebanon. I see the men who 
planted the first orchards on this side of the Missouri, whose fruit 
at the Centennial Exhibition was the admiration of representatives 
of forty states and territories, as well as from fifty foreign nations. 
Persons listen to my poor words wlio saw cities spring from the 
earth, not at the music of a harp, but at the harsh sound of ham- 
mers. I speak to men who brought hither in prairie schooners 
the first few pecks of grain whose increase has filled fleets of 
vessels bound for lands across the sea. I am. with the herdsmen 
who drove the first stock to this vast pasture, supplied with salt 
as well as water by the bounty of nature, whose cattle on a single 
prairie outnumber those the old Patriarch saw on the thousand 
hills of distant Judea. Nebraska, a tottering child in years, is a 
full grown giant in strength and development. 

TUE IMPORT OF THESE CHANGES. 

What does this surpassing progress imply ? That the whole coun 
try is increasing in wealth, prosperity, and population? Not at all. 
Omaha goes up because Salem goes down. Valley farms are 
opened in Nebraska for the reason that hill farms are abandoned 
in Massachusetts. Lands in the new West rise in value in the 
ratio that lands in the old East fall in value. Men come here be- 
cause they leave there. They choose to "go west and gi-ow up 
with the country " rather than stay in the East and go down with 



6 

the country. As wheat fields, extend back from the banks of the 
Missouri they recede from the shores ot the Atlantic. As your 
corn fields encroach on the domains of the buffalo, trees and bushes 
enroach on the fields long planted with cultiv^ated crops on the 
Eastern slope of the Alleghanies. As the acreage in plants used 
for human food increases in the valley of the Platte and Elkhorn, 
it steadily decreases in the valley of the Merrimac and Roanoke. 
During the decade in which JSTebraska more than quadrupled its 
inhabitants, five states once as prosperous as this saw thrir jiop- 
ulation diminish. The men who came here to seek fresh fields and 
pastures new, left behind exhausted fields and pastures old. Dur- 
ing the vears in which this new state received golden medals for 
her golden apples, that old orchard country which furnished cider 
to the boys who beat back the British regulars in 1776, almost 
ceased to produce fruit. Fortunate it M'as that Nebraska in 1869 
produced one thousand seven hundred twenty-nine bushels of 
M'lieat for each hundred of her peoi)le, for Rhode Island, once a 
w^heat-exporting state, raised only three-tentiis of a bushel for 
each hundred of her people, possibly a gr-ain for each individual. 
Well was it that during the last decade the number of farms in- 
creased in the Western states, in Illinois, 59.493; in Iowa, 55.129; 
and in Kansas, 27.802; for during that period the number of im- 
proved farms decreased in several of the Eastern states, in Rhode 
Island, 38; in New Hampshire, 859; and in Massachusetts, 9.101. 
Honor to the son of Nebraska who instituted "Arbor Day," 
for the sons of Maine have destroyed their magnificent forests to 
such an extent that Pennsylvania coal is used for wanning farm- 
houses. 

A LESSON FKOM THE FAST. 

The people iu all newly-settled sections of the country are 
prone to indulge in the pleasant conceit that there was never a 
soil so productive as that they cultivate. The farmers in the pre- 
sent granary of this country, seemingly forget about the \essels 
Washington once loaded with the product of his estate, and 
the broad wheat-fields on the Schuyler farni, that were burned, 
lest they should supply an invading army with bread. There 
are old nejrroes in Yiro-inia and Maryland, who have reached 
higher to " shuck" the ears ot golden maize than any men were 
ever requii-ed to reach in doing the same work on this side of 



the Missouri. There are young men in the valley of the Genesee 
and Shenandoah, who have cut with a sickle larger crops of wheat 
than were ever harvested by the reaper in the valley of the 
Platte or Arkansas. More potatoes to the acre; and larger pump- 
kins, as measured by the tape-line, have been gathered from the 
hill-sides along the Kennebec, than Avere ever grown on the 
plains by the Neosho. 

Among the wasted, desolated sections of the East, grand in colo- 
nial history, one may see the evidences ot former agricultural 
wealth. There stand the ruined mansions erected by the price of 
food products exported to the West Indies. Luxury once rioted 
on the produce of fruitful fields, where gaunt famine stalks to- 
day. Hospitahty extended a generous welcome to many a 
splendid abode, which the tramp and beggar now pass by, as too 
dilapidated to afford the promise of a crust of bread. The nettle, 
thistle, and cockle-bur thrive in the gardens where the Cavaliers 
planted rare exotics a century ago; and the owl hoots in cham- 
iiers that once resounded M-ith the strains of melody. Kains have 
washed away tlie terraces built in front of beautiful villas over- 
looking the sea, and wild beasts devour their prey in cellars once 
stocked with the richest vintage of the Madeiras. 

There are men now living who remember the time when each 
of the New England States produced sufficient corn and grain to 
supply the inhabitants. There are comparatively young men 
who were engaged in early life in driving beeves from Maine and 
New Hampshire to the markets of Montreal and Quebec. On a 
recent visit to one of those states, I was asked to express my 
preference for Texas or Canadian beef, as the market was supplied 
with both. This was m a town which my grandfather colonized, 
and where not only he, but nearly all the early settlers, amassed 
very respectable fortunes by legitimate farming. Their great 
mansions yet stand on the summits of hills, monuments of the 
former agricultural . wealth of the country. They reared large 
families; erected great churches; endowed institutions of learning; 
and became wealthy by exporting grain, fruit, vegetables, and 
meat. 

A time came, however, when an occasional grist of North 
River, Yellow-flat, or Horse-tooth corn, was ground in country 
mills. At flrst, these strano'e-looking kernels attracted great at- 



8 

tention, and were often taken home by patrons of the mills as cu- 
riosities to delight the eyes of children. But, at length, they be- 
came very common, and little girls no longer used them instead 
of beads to adorn their necks. Then came flour from the 
famous valley of the Genesee, and the people supposed it would 
continue to come from there. But the years were not many be- 
fore the Genesefe called on the Miami, the Miami on the Wabash, 
the Wabash on the Sangamon, and the Sangamon on the Des 
Moines for bread. Corn, oats, cotton, and tobacco, as well as 
" the plant of civilization," like the people who once raised these 
crops on the Eastern slope of the Alleghanies. have been con- 
stantly moving West. , 

M^ILL THE WEST TAKE WARNING? 

Even the older sections of the fertile W^est are passing into a 
state of decline in the production of crops. Np state east of Il- 
linois now produces sufficient wheat to supply the inhabitants, if 
indeed any produces sufficient meat. Six years ago I attended a 
farmers' convention in Wisconsin, and the subject which received 
the most attention was the restoration of fertility to worn-out 
lands. Mr. Bateham, of Ohio, in a recent communication to the 
Country Gentleman^ recites that many of the dairy farms in his 
state, whicli twenty years ago supported twenty-five cows, are able 
to sustain but ten at the ]3resent time. 

What has become of that marvelous fei-tility which, in the re- 
mote or recent past, produced such wonderful crops of cereals, 
grass, cotton, and tobacco? Sold in the half-bushel, bale, or hogs- 
head; hauled to the nearest station or landing; transported by 
railroad or steamer; devoured, worn out, or burned in domestic 
cities, or shipped across the seas. While our lands have been 
growing poorer, those in almost every country in Europe have 
been growing richer. During the period that the yield of wheat 
per acre in New York decreased one-half, the yield of the same 
grain in England was doubled. 

Shall the history of American agriculture repeat itself here? 
Will the time come, in the existence of persons now living, when 
cattle will be driven from Idaho and wheat be brought 
from Oregon to feed the inhabitants of manufacturing villages 
along the banks of the Platte? Will the readers of Omaha pa- 
pers, a century hence, find Nebraska farms advertised for sale 



9 

for less than half the cost of the improvements'^ Wih the title, 
" Great American Desert," be again applied to a large portion of 
the territory of this fair state? Will it, must it, come to pass 
in a round of years, that some traveler from New England shall 
take his stand on the broken trunk of a cultivated cottonwood to 
sketch the ruins of deserted homes? 

Time alone can tell. If the farmers in the new West pursue 
the same course that has been pursued by farmers in the old East, 
they must reasonably expect the same results. In everything 
the future will reproduce the past, the circumstances being the 
same. The laws of nature, unlike those of states and municipali- 
ties, are self-executing. You cannot rob the soil as men do a 
savings bank, and expect to escape punishment. It is very easy 
to raise money by the sale of buiRilo bones and successive crops 
of wheat, but very difficult to replace the treasures that have been 
removed. The farmers in nearly every new section are so fond of 
declaring large and frequent dividends that they are very likely to 
destroy all their capital. 

OTUER MODES OF EXHAUSTION. 

But there are other ways of destroying the value of lands, that 
^re infinitely worse than continued croppings. A note bearing 
ten per cent, interest will exhaust the resources of a farm faster 
than successive crops of tobacco and wheat. A mill-stone may not 
be a comfortable thing to have about one's neck, but the choice 
between that and a cut-throat or slip-noose mortgage is very slight. 
Creditors are harder to fight than prairie fires. Grasshoppers 
are not liable to come every year, but interest coupons put in an 
appearance with absolute regularity. Better have a dug-out, with 
content and a clear title, than a villa, whose plate-glass win- 
dows are darkened by a mortgage. Hope prompts a man to con- 
tract debts, but fear pursues him till they are paid. The farmer 
who raises a loan in order to improve his estate, generally impov- 
erishes it in order to remove the indebtedness. The tempta- 
tion to possess all the land within sight was first held out by an 
individual whose reputation none of us are ambitious to acquire. 

METHODS OF EXHAUSTING COMMUNITIES. 

Objectionable as is the practice common in all new sections of 
the country, of encumbering private property, the custom of 
loading communities with debts is infinitely worse. An individ- 
ual has the undoubted right, however injudicious the act may be, 



10 

of mortgaging hi.s own land. One may do as be chooses with his 
own; when it comes to encumbering all the propert}^ that is and 
is to be in a sparsely settled school district, township, county, or 
state, the case is different. Our fathers went to war with Engr- 
land because they were taxed without being represented. \\ iio 
represent the persons who M'ill be taxed to pay the bonds of some 
frontier county in this state, due forty years hence? The men 
who contracted the debts and who used the money will all be dead 
or gone to vote bonds in some county the other side of the 
liocky mountains. 

It has in all times been regarded as an enormity to rob the 
dead — persons who have left the world — but is it not quite as 
heinous to rob the unborn — innocents who have not yet come in- 
to the world? What right have any people to erect public build- 
ings, subsidize railroads, lay sidewalks, purchase libraries, build 
bridges and grade turnpikes and charge up the accounts \vith 
compound interest to men whose mothers are sleeping in cradles? 
Long before these prospective taxpapers are old enough to derive 
any benefit Irom them, the buildings will be in deca}', the rail- 
roads in bankruptcy, the sidewalks in the mud, the books in rag- 
bags, the bridges in ruins, while the turnpike will be abandoned 
or M' ashed away. 

I sympathize with the tender boy infant who learns, on arriving 
at the age of consciousness, that, in addition to suffering from 
teething, having the mumps, measles, chicken-pox, and the whole 
round of intantile diseases, he must devote many of the best years 
of his future life to earning money to pay the debts that some 
other boys' grandfathers contracted. It will be no marvel if he is 
a troublesome child, and frets, in view of having to pay for a court- 
house occupied and ruined by politicians in a previous century. 

CUARAd'ER OF PUBLIC IMPROVEMENTS. 

It is M'ise and well for a community, even if it is a newly set- 
tled one, to have fair town and county buildings, churches, and 
school-houses, providing the people are able to erect them with- 
out injustice to their individual needs and comforts. It is not 
the part of wisdom, however, to erect public edifices vastly supe- 
rior to those occupied as dwellings. If this be done it will not af- 
ford an evidence of thrift and prosperity, but of public prodigality. 
An enterprising town is not necessarily one that is able to borrow 



11 

more money than it lias property, both pnbhc and private, but one 
where the people are content to live within their income and who 
pay as they buy and build. 

I once stood on the gilded dome of a towering court-house in 
an adjoining state and looked as far as the eye could reach over a 
succession of huts of turf and shanties of rough boards. But the 
sight pleased me not. I liked better what I saw in a neighboring 
county, where tlie people met to worship, administer justice and 
transact public business in an unpretending wooden building, 
that, ere this, has probably been converted into a warehouse or 
livery stable. I learned that the first county had an empty treas- 
ury, though the vault in the court-house was capacious, fire and 
burglar-proof, a large floating debt, and a bonded indebtedness 
of a fourth of a million dollars, while the second county had sev- 
eral thousand dollars in its treasury, had no outstanding obliga- 
tions, had never issued a bond, and never intended to issue one. 

I know not how Nebraska is situated in this respect, but I 
notice that Kansas has established an unenviable reputation in the 
matter of county and municipal indebtedness. I read not long 
since, as probably most of you did, hoAv the free and enlightened 
citizens of one town, fearing that its creditors would seize pro])- 
erty to satisfy judgments obtained for overdue bonds, quietly 
placed the burg, or rather the buildings that composed it, on 
wheels, drew the precious load to a piece of raw prairie, and there 
dumj^ed it off. The creditors were surprised as well as enraged 
the next morning to find that the town had run away, leaving 
nothing behind but its debts. The example of these enterprising 
people will serve as a solemn warning to all bloated bondholders 
not to loan theii- money to a wooden town, lest haply it takes to 
itself wheels and rolls away. 

Railroads are very convenient things, but it does not pay farm- 
ers to build one and give it to some corporation that will man- 
age it to the detriment of the people that live along the line. 
Many counties in Kansas that are repudiating their bonds have 
found this out to their sorrow, it adds to the value of real-estate 
and to the price of farm products to have a manufacturing estab- 
lishment located in the vicinity. But if it can only be obtained 
by the payment of .a large bonus or subsidy it will be better to 
dispense with the luxury. A college or seminary may be of 
great advantage to a town; but if the citizens pay so much to se- 



12 

cure its location that tliey cantiot afford to send their children to 
school; the institution will do them little good. 

Eailroads will come, manufactures will be erected, and colleges 
will be established without subsidies, as soon as there is sufficient 
patronage to support them. At the close of the late war a circus 
clown, performing in a southern city, gave this caution to the 
negroes who were listening to his jokes: '"Don't all try to be 
white men in a minute.' ' Many a frontier town requires to be 
warned against attempting to be like Boston in a day. 

HAVE WE THE RIGHT TO BOAST? 

As a people we have been very boastful of our growth and 
progress in material affairs. We devoted our centennial year to 
bragging. We declared in song and speech that no nation had 
ever amassed so much wealth in so short a time. By imj)lication 
we claimed our prosperity as the result of our peculiar institu- 
tions, or as the fruit of our thrift, industry, and enterprise. We 
counted over how many new states had been added to the old 
thirteen. We showed how much new territory had been opened 
up to settlement. We made an inventory of everything within 
the boundaries of the country and credited ourselves with having 
produced it. 

Some future historian or social scientist may take an altogether 
different view of how our wealth was acquired, and may claim 
that we have simjjly appropriated the bounties of nature. Some 
unborn Gibbon may recount how we passed over the fairest land 
in the world, like Goths and Vandals, taking to ourselves or de- 
stroying, not what other men had produced, but what God had 
made. It is certainly very easy to account for our physical pros- 
perity on the ground of fortuitous circumstances, and to show 
that our advancement in material affairs is due almost entirely to 
physical causes. 

What was the character of the climate, soil and natural produc- 
tions of the land our fathers settled and their descendants have 
been taking possession of '? As a rule, the average rain-fall is 
neither much greater nor much less than what is desired. There 
has not be.en a season since the country was first settled that a 
fair crop of farm products has not been raised. There are very few 
natural malarial districts in the entire country. The soil is 
fertile almost beyond comparison. In the South a bale of cotton 
or a ton of choice tobacco could be produced on an acre, while 



13 

in the North fifty bushels of wheat or seventy of corn were 
the ordinary yield of the same area of land. The forests contain 
almost everything valuable in the line of trees. One yields a 
bark that can be made into boats which are water-tight and so 
light that they may be carried on the head, while several afford a 
most delicious sugar. Some supph' material for tanning, others 
pitch, tar and turpentine, and still others furnish the best ship 
timber ever discovered. The leaves of some and the bark of 
others are for the healing of the nations. Forests of equal value 
have rarely if ever been found. 

The soil and climate were adapted not onlj^to all the cultivated 
crops of Europe but to many others. A great variety of valuable 
indigenous plants were found, some wild, others, as coi'n and 
tobacco, cultivated by the natives. Tobacco was in immediate and 
extensive demand in Europe at almost fabulous prices. No crop 
is of as much value to new settlers as Indian corn. A handful 
of seed will produce grain enough to supply a person with excel- 
lent food for a year. No country was ever discovered containing 
so many desirable plants as the territory embraced in the United 
States. 

The forests as well as the grassy plains teemed with game of 
every description — enough on each square mile to fill Noah's ark. 
There was scarcely an animal not valuable for food that was not 
valuable for its fur. The first cargoes of furs sent to England 
brought very high prices. Even to-day an expert hunter or 
trapper can gain a good livelihood and lay up money anywhere 
on the frontier by following the occupation of Daniel Boone or 
his remote ancestor Nimrod. In addition to all the wild animals, 
the woods in many parts of the country*were full of hogs, while 
the great plains swarmed with cattle and horses, the progeny 
of those brought over by the early Spanish explorers. 

Such finny wealth as this country possessed was never known 
since the time those favored fishermen drew their nets at the 
command of their Master. The water along the coast was liter- 
ally alive with cod, hake, mackerel, halibut, herring and blue fish. 
During the spring the rivers swarmed with salmon and shad — 
dainties fit to set before the king. At least a dozen varieties of 
excellent fish were found in all the lakes, while trout almost 
without number sported in the little brooks. 



14 

The territory of the United States is exceedingly well adapted 
to commerce. Although occupying the central portion of a 
continent, more than two-thirds of tlie frontier are the shores of 
oceans or navigable lakes. Its ocean coast represents a distance 
of more than half the circumference of the earth. If we add to 
this the length of the coast ot the great lakes and the length of 
the rivers that may be navigated, we have a distance about twice 
that of the circumference of the globe. In many parts ot the 
country there is a choice of two or thi'ee river rontes, each run- 
ning in a different direction. 

Portions of this territory, so healthful, so fertile, so well watered 
by the rains of heaven and the rivers of earth, so well supplied 
with timber, so well stocked with fish, game and animals, waiting 
to be re-domesticated, and withal so well adapted to inland and 
foreign commerce, have during all our history been at the dis- 
posal of every one who chose to move upon them. The maximum 
price of onr public lands has been '$1.2o per acre, while in point 
of fact most of our national domain has been given away. 

There seems to be no good reason why people should not be 
land-owners when every one can have a plantation by claiming it. 
Why should not every man have as many horses as Bonner or 
Solomon, when he has naught to do but to catch them with a 
lasso and brand them as his own ( Why should not the wish 
of the French king, that every peasant have a chicken in his 
pot, be verified in a region wliei;e better chickens than he ever 
dreamed of run in flocks through the waving grass ? Why should 
we not eat more beef than the English do, when we have ()n]y to 
spot an animal and sliQot it at sight ( 

Young as our country is, and rich as it was in natural resources 
of every kind, it is to-day presenting many evidences of decline 
in prosperity. Immigration has nearly stopped and emigration 
has begun. The [papers of Great Britain speak of the large 
number of settlers arriving there from America. Contractors 
find it to their advantage to engage mechanics in New York and 
to pay their passage across the Atlantic. Once remittances from 
this country to Ireland and Germany were constant. Now in 
manj^ sections of the country the matter is reversed The 
persons who [^remained at home are sending funds to distressed 
relatives here. 



15 

The commerce of a country favorably situated to engage in nav- 
igation, furnishes one of the best evidences of pi'osperity, while a 
loss in commerce is a certain proof of decline. Emerson, com- 
menting on the prosperity of England, says: " The foundations 
of its greatness are the rolling waves. More than the diamond 
kohinoor which glitters among their crown jewels, they prize that 
dull pebble, which is wiser than a man, whose poles turn them- 
selves to the poles of the world, and whose axis is parallel to the 
axis of the world." "Forty thousand ships, '" he adds, "are en- 
tered in Lloyds' lists." Our poet-philosopher marvels not that all 
Englishmen join in the vaunt of Pope: 

" Let liulia boast her palms: nor envy we 

The weeping- amber, nor tlie spicy tree. 

Since by our oaks, these precious loads are borne. 

And realms commanded wliich these trees adorn." 

In 1776 we complained of the King of England " for cutting 
oif our trade with all parts of the world," and went to war about 
it, Qnite recently we gave up that trade without striking a blow. 
Two years ago seventy per cent, of our exports and imports were 
transported in foreign bottoms, while hfteen years before, eighty 
per cent, of our commerce was carried in American vessels. 

We have driven hsh to foreign streams by building dams across 
our own. We have destroyed the water-power on hundi-eds of 
streams l)y cutting down the forests along their banks. We have 
increased the production of Aveeds, while we have diminished the 
yield of valuable plants. We have wantonly destroyed harmless 
birds, so that harmful insects come in clouds to destroy our cul- 
tivated crops. Not content with killing the hen that laid the 
golden egg^ we are pnrsuing the turkey, goose, and duck that lay 
eggs of silver, nickel and copper. 

It is true we have built many thousands of miles of railroad; and 
it is also true that the history of their construction and management 
is a reproach to the nation. We have many pubhc works and pub- 
lic buildings constructed by borrowed money. We have many in- 
fant manufactures, that are being brought up by the fashionable 
process of wet nursing, and some that have reached mature years, 
which are constantly sending forth a baby-cry for assistance. 
We have increased very rapidly in population, but no class has 
increased so fast as tramps and paupers. We have much volun- 
tary industry, and much enforced idleness. We have expended 



16 

tens of millions on courts of justice, jails, and prisons, but life and 
property were never as insecure as now. At the close of the most 
bountiful harvest ever gathered, there will be more persons de- 
manding the bread of charity tlian were ever known before. 
Growth and decay are nearer together with us, as respects both 
space and time, than in any country in the cvilized world. 

CONCLUSION. 

In the arch of the Hrraament that spans this beautiful state let 
the star of empire pause in its western course. In its eifulgent 
beams let a better and grander civilization develop than the 
world has ever known. Let the errors that aj^pear in the past 
history of other communities have no place in the future history 
of this commonwealth. Let the follies and vices that have served 
to bring other portions of the country into disrepute operate to 
insure wisdom and virtue here. 

Men of Nebraska, you have appropriated the last portion of the 
national domain that is naturally adapted to general agriculture. 
You have settled upon a soil jjroductive almost beyond compari- 
son. It behooves you to guard well the treasure you have taken 
in your possession. It becomes yoii to reverse the order of pro- 
ceedings that others have followed out, to give to posterity this 
beautiful region in better condition than you received it. 

Over this soil which has accumulated fertility for untold cen. 
turies, may the ears of corn rise higher during each successive 
year. In this aii- purified by yonder mountains, skirted by ever- 
greens and capped by snow — may tlie grassy pennons wave 
thicker every season they are unfurled. And may the formation 
of the society which I have had the honor to address, mark an 
epoch in the history of American agriculture, the commencement 
of the era of progress and reform. 






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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




Hollinger 

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Mill Run F3'1719 



